How reliable are performance tests in Total War games?

[Incendio]

Just want to know, how reliable are performance tests in Total War games that have this feature: Shogun 2, Rome 2, Attila, Thrones of Britannia? If your computer is performing reasonably good in performance test, that means you can play the game with at least a similar performance?

[izzi]

Just want to know, how reliable are performance tests in Total War games that have this feature: Shogun 2, Rome 2, Attila, Thrones of Britannia? If your computer is performing reasonably good in performance test, that means you can play the game with at least a similar performance?

Are you talking about in game test (Benchmark test)? I think if your pc have a high fps score, than normally yes, it has to work similarly. But it also depends on some factors like the environment, mods, etc...At least, that's what i think.

[Incendio]

Are you talking about in game test (Benchmark test)? I think if your pc have a high fps score, than normally yes, it has to work similarly. But it also depends on some factors like the environment, mods, etc...At least, that's what i think.

Yes, I talk about benchmarking test that comes with Total War games, "Forest" for Rome 2 and "londinium" for Attila Total War.

[herne_the _hunter]

Just want to know, how reliable are performance tests in Total War games that have this feature: Shogun 2, Rome 2, Attila, Thrones of Britannia? If your computer is performing reasonably good in performance test, that means you can play the game with at least a similar performance?

I would take it with a pinch of salt as it just provides a guide in an overall selection of actions to stress your system settings. The average frame rate is just that an average. The most obvious thing is to look at the graph to see what the average frame rate is and also where the lowest performance are peaks are. Also pay attention to the action on screen in the demo and the frame rate that shows. Just be aware how that will translate to real world scenarios in game and adjust settings if needed to taste as really it is just a guide to performance.

[Sagat]

Think of it like this, it's very simple.....

The campaign map is run by the CPU, meanwhile the battle map is run by your GPU...
So since that ingame benchmark is a battlemap, it's only half useful, maybe less than that because you spend most of your time on the campaign map anyway.

CA did not include any campaign map benchmarking for good reason, and that reason being Total War games always had terribly optimized CPU usage problems, basically it overloads 1 core while the others sit mostly idle, so the framerates on the campaign map will get really low especially when you click on an army or city you may see your fps drop by up to 20 frames.

The battle map uses the GPU a lot more so you actually get properly playable framerates there, still not as good as a well optimized game in 2018 should look like, but playable 60fps+ at least.